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The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Sunday asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to start investigating Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and for the United Nations (UN) to inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities, according to a statement issued at the conclusion of a meeting in Ramallah for the PLO’s Executive Committee.

Wafa reported that the PLO also charged Israel of ethnic cleansing and racial segregation, which it also said were considered a war crime that should be investigated by the ICC.

The PLO said Israel’s settlement expansion, which it described as an aggression, is going to create “a system of discrimination and racial segregation.”

It accused Israel of carrying out what it describe as “silent ethnic cleansing” in Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, in areas south of Hebron and in other areas of the occupied West Bank.

As a result, said the PLO, it has decided “to refer the file of settlements as a war crime and the file of ethnic cleansing, discrimination and apartheid to the International Criminal Court with an urgent appeal to open a judicial investigation into the war crimes committed by the State of Israel in the Palestinian territories occupied during the 1967 aggression.”

The PLO also called on the United Nations to take “necessary and speedy measures to inspect (Israel’s) nuclear facilities and the necessity of (Israel) implementing the decisions of the (Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons).”

It called on the UN to provide protection to the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, saying that the international community, particularly the UN, cannot continue with its double standard policy and not implement international law and UN resolutions when it comes to Israel.

It said Jewish settler groups that have been terrorizing the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, such as Price Tag, the Hilltop Youths, and others should be considered as terrorist organizations and treated as such. It accused Israel of protecting these groups while they carry out attacks and terror acts against the Palestinian civilians and their properties.

The PLO said that international law and UN resolutions relevant to the Palestinian cause remain “the only base for a comprehensive and balanced political settlement that will provide security and stability to all people in the region, including the state of Palestine on the June 1967 borders with Jerusalem in its heart as the eternal capital of the people and state of Palestine, that will also protect the rights of the Palestinian refugees for return to their homes they were forced out from by military aggression as stated in UN resolution 194.”